Pinterest is a tool to help connect people with your products and drive them back to your site; it is another tool to draw attention to your product or service.

So why is Pinterest different, why is it getting so much attention? First, the site generates a huge amount of web traffic. Second, it has become a major traffic referral site. Pinterest matters because a lot of people are on Pinterest and a lot of people are using Pinterest.

In increasing numbers, people are making purchasing decisions based on Pinterest. They search for a product or services, see a visual comparison and then click on the image that interests them. This takes them directly back to the source website of the product or service.

Pinterest gives people a different way to connect with products and services. Google search is one way Pinterest search is becoming another. Pinterest is a way to have new customers stumble upon products and services in a new way, it’s beautiful, stunning, requires little thought to search effectively and it’s new, a great combination for social media.

You can start getting your products and services on Pinterest even if you are not a Pinterest site user. Your products and services may already be on Pinterest. Here is a simple trick to find out if they are. Go to the URL bar at the top of your browser and type http://pinterest.com/source/yourURL. The results will be all the people who are pinning your products or services.

So, the meat is how to get others to pin your products or services so their followers will see the pins as well as your followers. Here are some basics to get products and services pinned:

1) Give people something great to pin. Make sure you are creating content that people will want to share. Great product photography and graphics helps and creative displays are the key to visual acceptance.

a) Great product photography. Your supplier could be the source of this, but tag it to your website, not theirs.

b) Great life/style photography. Create settings and situations that show your product or service in action. Also showing your employees in a fun working environment while creating the product or service can send a positive message.

c) Pin great content. You can pin video tutorials, infographics and testimonials tied to your products and services, which should link browsers back to your website.

d) Great video content. Create fun videos that relate to your product or service but entertain. Remember to link back to your website.

2) Do your research, search for similar products and services, and see what others are pinning and which are the most successful. What catches your eye? What do you see and say, “I could do better than that,” or “I have a better picture than what they are using?”

3) Make it easy for people to pin what you post. Make it as easy as possible for people to find an image on your website and get it on to Pinterest. Make sure to include “Pin It” buttons everywhere on your website where you have a lot of images. This says to a visitor to your site, “if you like these images, feel free to pin them to your Pinterest site.”

4) Encourage people to pin your products and services. Go a step further, offer a 10% discount for Pinterest users that create a board of your products and services. The traffic generated by a promotion of this mature is potentially mind boggling! Once a Pinterest user pins your product, it gets repinned and repinned over and over.

5) Remember that even if your website is not mobile friendly, Pinterest is, so it gives the mobile community access to your products and services instantly. The mobile optimization of your content is done for you automatically on the Pinterest site.

6) All pins to your Pinterest site can be automatically tweeted to your Twitter fans and posted to your Facebook page by simply clicking a convenient share button on the Pinterest site; adding to its power as part of your social media network.

For a successful Pinterest site, engage with the Pinterest community. Have boards related to your products or services but not just your products or services. Even on the boards that specifically promote your products and services, have other items and eye candy that enhances the experience of your products and services. This will help establish you as an authority in your field, not just a product pusher. This can help your Pinterest site rank higher in the search results within Pinterest itself and within Google searches.

The best way to make Pinterest work for you is to create great photography, great photographic content, and great videos to create story with pictures. Put useful captions on all posts, make sure all content is linked to your website and make all pictures and graphic content pinnable from your website by installing the “Pin It” button on every page with pinnable content.

Remember, like any social media, Pinterest is just a tool; it is a tool to connect people with your products and services and bring them back to your website. Do not over think this, the better your products and services, the better the chance you will draw traffic back to your website where the selling is done. Pinterest is not a sales tool; it is part of an overall social media network, that work together to bring traffic to your website.